i’d like to think life exists on every single rocky planet. i remember reading about the discovery of single celled organisms deep in the earth’s crust. they exist in a very low-energy environment and therefore have slow metabolisms. some of these are theorized to be able to live for over a million years. they literally extract energy from inorganic compounds in metabolic pathways we don’t understand.

the question is: did life originate on the surface (deep sea hydrothermal vents are still surface in this context) or deep in the earth?

if life originated in the earth, then I think there’s a very high probability every single rocky planet is essentially a seed. inside of it’s core it has life and whenever the surface environment grants some long term stability, the life slowly emerges and evolves into different forms.

so how would extra terrestrial beings and humans interact in the next 10 years?

basically, I think there’s a chance (although low on such a short time scale as 10 years) that we will discover life on another planet. or at least some very significant signs of life. either on Mars or Venus or some Galilean moon, etc.

Life just isn’t good at cooperation.

Our only data point for life is carbon based life on Earth. And from that we have

• a variety of insects that live in colonies that cooperate in a profound way, putting themselves in harm’s way for the sake of the colony. Ie ants, bees, termites

• a variety of insects (and fish and birds) that have swarming behaviors, which involves individuals coordinating movements to confuse predators, conserve energy, or find food. ie locusts, sardines, starlings

• a variety of animals that work as herd animals, which intuitively agree to use the power of numbers to increase the safety of the herd. Ie gazelles, sheep, cattle

• a variety of predatory animals that cooperate in order to bring down animals they would have a much harder time getting alone. Ie wolves, lions, and arguably humans

• a variety of primates that live in tribes ie chimps, baboons, and again humans

• a variety of trees that share resources through vast underground fungal networks, known as mycorrhizal networks. so not only are trees cooperating with other trees, the fungus is enabling that cooperation in exchange for a piece of the pie

and that’s just complex life, there’s many more examples in cellular life. animals have been known to show altruism, social animals take care of each other, like feeding and caring for the wounded.

cooperation has evolved in virtually every branch of the tree of life and oftentimes independently. it wouldn’t happen if life wasn’t conducive to cooperation and cooperation wasn’t a positive selective pressure of evolution

and i mean, just look at modern human society. do you really think our globalized society would work without a profound amount of cooperation? we even have a word for this idea, the social contract.

I really don’t get this viewpoint of yours. I see the opposite. Yes, humans run into problems at large scales but life absolutely is good at cooperation and in fact the most successful species tend to be the most cooperative

primary thing $$$

it’s what will ultimately make or break the strike. people start getting desperate when they are behind on their rent

i feel like only people with too much free time get bored

most people are caught up in their own day to day lives. it’s just the nature of things.

you have to go to work to pay your bills. your girlfriend wants to go out to dinner every once in a while. you have to go have dinner at your parents. you have to walk your dog. you have to brush your teeth, do your laundry. you have to figure out what you’re gonna eat for dinner. should probably schedule that dentist appointment soon. need to do my taxes.

etc

really doesn’t leave you that much time or energy to worry about the big problems of the world.

look at the chaos that Y2K was. one doesn’t simply adopt a new calendar.

it’s too ingrained. it’s like ripping out the foundations of a house to build a new one. it would have to be one hell of a calendar

i grew up an illegal immigrant in the US. we were poor and struggled but ultimately I had a good upbringing and I have a good life now.

the world is uncaring and unjust. you have to stick up for yourself and build something for you and the ones you love. nobody else will do it for you.

unless you are a silver spoon trust fund baby of course (which isn’t exclusive to any race or gender… although being straight & white definitely increases the chances). most of us don’t get that privilege

my dad always taught me not to let the workings of the world affect my personal mood

even if the world is going to shit, you can carve out a little slice of life for yourself and the people you love. take care of those people, take care of what you own, do the things you’re passionate about and let God worry about the rest

and I say that as an atheist. it’s a metaphor

yeah exactly. when the system is about to blow up, they turn a valve and release a little steam

that’s one of two paths we are headed towards today. the pressure is building up. we either need to turn the valve soon OR we’re gonna blow up

i have a feeling though we’re headed for the explosion route

i dont want to sound like a moral relativist and i’m hesitant to respond because i also don’t want to be a hitler apologist

but I think it’s really hard to categorize a person into a “totally bad” position. for example, Hitler had a big ego but he probably genuinely wanted the best for Germany. He cared for animals, was a vegetarian (for the most part, especially in later years of life) and advocated for animal cruelty laws.

if he genuinely believed that eliminating the jews was necessary in order to secure the autonomy of the German people, does that make him a bad person? To a Nazi, the Jew is an evil parasite on society that needs to be eliminated for the good of the entire population.

now please understand I’m speaking from their perspective not saying it is correct

but this type of anti-semitic ideology did not spring up spontaneously in the 1930s but was something deep that developed over the course of hundreds of years and ultimately culminated in the genocide we saw

but if for example, we took everyone in this thread and raised them in 1890s Germany- how many of them would believe in tolerance and racial equality? I’d honestly be surprised if there was a single person

I don’t know. I understand there are good things and bad things. but the difference between good and bad people is more complicated. bad people i typically relegate to those individuals that get pleasure of out cruelty or suffering

i think most legislation is explicitly for the capitalist class. that much we probably agree with

but i do think every once in a while, when there is a ton of pressure and the elites are scared, they throw a bone to the working class.

it happened with the antitrust act, it happened with the New Deal, and it happened in the 1960s with the Civil Rights era and the end to Vietnam

yes, capitalism will eat itself. it’s what we’re essentially seeing right now in slow motion. but there is something there in democracy beyond just capitalism. even if it’s buried deep down and impotent

i think it was perfectly timed

a) after the primary was informally settled

b) a couple weeks before the candidate was formally sworn in

If that was the case, they would have done it sooner

sooner and there may have been a real primary contest. too risky. they did it with just enough time to sort of “zerg rush” Kamala into the primary without giving anyone time to mount a meaningful attempt at the primary

and unprecedented, move. It’s a huge risk to drop the incumbent in favor of somebody else.

unprecedented, yes. it’s the first time in US history since we’ve been using the primary system that a candidate got the party nomination without a single vote being cast for them

risky, also yes. but they (I think correctly) determined that Biden was a lost cause.

so it was either a) go with the guy you know you’re gonna lose or b) go with someone you will probably lose with

b is the logical choice

it’s an eternal battle. every once in a while we pass legislation to try and reign in corporate power. like for example the anti trust act in the early 1900s

the issue is that public attention is temporary. eventually we move on to the next crisis and people forget. grow complacent.

corporate interest, however, is eternal. it’s persistent and never gives up. it keeps pushing, infallibly, in order to weaken the structures meant to reign in their power. whether by legislation/policy (AT&T and friends unilaterally killing Net Neutrality some years back, Disney signing into law expansion of copyright, etc) or through more subtle methods (buying politicians and getting people into positions of power that have no intention of enforcing the laws)

this is inevitably what happens with every democracy. eventually the vigilance fails and the structures of power are hijacked by opportunists.

although having said all that, I don’t think greed had much to do with the inflation we saw. Sure, some companies took advantage and raised prices more than they needed to just to inflate that extra juicy profit margin.

but realistically we’re headed to war and war means massive government spending which means inflation

And it wasn’t. The supply chain breakdown would have happened no matter who was in office

if i remember correctly, COVID brought our inflation up to roughly 6%. then the Ukrainian war took it the rest of way where it peaked near 9% (over 10% in my home state)

these things would have happened anyway, although choosing to prolong the Ukrainian war as long as possible most definitely increased inflation. people think we only gave 2 or 3 hundred billion, but realistically the American public has paid more than a trillion in the invisible tax that is inflation. hundreds of thousands of layoffs because of higher interest rates are also connected to this

Bernie lost in the primaries

DNC primaries are a joke. look at this last primary. oh wait we didn’t actually have a primary.

they intentionally waited until the “primary” was over so that Biden could get the incumbent automatic primary votes and then let him drop out so they could rush in Kamala without having a real primary.

i firmly believe if Democrats were not trying to game democracy this presidential cycle, DNC would have had a chance to beat Trump

another 12% responded as ‘unsure’, which I would suspect would lean toward “I don’t want to admit a socially unacceptable answer”.

i’d lean towards “i don’t know enough about the facts to make a definitive statement”

public education isn’t great and even good public education rarely dives deeply in the life of Adolf Hitler beyond the obvious “he was a megalomaniac dictator who killed Jews and wanted to take over the world”

Hitler became Hitler because of his life experiences. He served in the German military during WW1, he was homeless in Vienna, he grew up poor with a sick mother. These events, along with the movements of the then-current cultural zietgiest, radicalized him in certain directions. It’s a complex story that is hard to break down into simplistic moral platitudes of “good person” or “bad person”

It’s because, in the liberal and activist communities, it’s become customary and accepted to treat men like shit.

this is just as dumb as the opposite “they didn’t vote for Kamala because she’s a woman”

people don’t like Kamala because she’s an extension of Joe Biden and Biden has been a failure. that’s why she lost. she offered status quo when people want change. the DNC is incapable of changing quick enough to avoid fascism

i think you give too much credit to Trump. the economy has been rigged against the working class for a long time. it’s just getting progressively more brutal which makes people feel increasingly insecure.

an insecure working class elects strongmen who promise simple solutions

there was a vulernability on the iphone a while back where someone would send you a specific hindu character and it would crash the OS. it can get you no matter what you do really, use or business. the difference is a business has a lot more to lose.

as for the OS talk…

I use MacOS on my macbook & Linux on my desktop at home. I don’t think Mac is intolerably locked down. I have virtually the same experience on both. Mac is a very smooth experience once you set it up how you like. I have the same command line applications, the same config files, the same firefox profile that gets synced in between them, same unix utilities that share folders/files as if they were native, can ssh from one to the other, etc

including windows in that would be a PITA

windows is clunky and the company pushing it is becoming progressively more hostile to its users. apple is greedy but at least with their OS it’s not pushy. it’s the hardware where they stick the knife and twist in terms of price

it’s pretty dangerous not to be getting security updates. probably for regular users won’t be a big deal. i have a feeling really bad vulnerabilities will be patched even if you don’t pay for it just out of a potential PR issue. but i would almost definitely pay this if I were a business who didn’t plan on switching to Win 11 soon

on a personal level i don’t understand why anyone continues to use windows these days